“To be honest, I’m not worried about the moral issue here,” Caplan, the Willkie Farr co-chairman told Singer about gaming his daughter’s test, according to one of the wiretap transcripts. “I’m worried about the, if she’s caught doing that, you know, she’s finished.”
The first cases to make their way through the system will set the tone, Chakravarty said, with “good, creative lawyering” building a “frame of reference.”
When it comes time for sentencing, he said, he could see a judge going either way -- sympathizing with parents who wanted the best for their kids, or scorning them because “those same judges also went to elite schools, and earned their way into them.”
At least one lawyer has declared that sort of contempt for the defendants’ actions. In his 40 years as a criminal defense attorney, Gerald Lefcourt has advocated for the Chicago Seven and the Black Panthers, and believes “everyone deserves to have the best defense.”
And the parents? “I’m so turned off by this conduct,” he said.
Mamet, in his open letter, reached a different conclusion. The fairest verdict, he wrote, may be “Not Guilty, but Don’t do it Again.”
This article provided by Bloomberg News.